The Congress: The Necessity Not to Change

How simple. Every eligible citizen
casts a single ballot, and the candidate attracting the most votes
becomes President of the United States. That was what Delegate James
Wilson of Pennsylvania had in mind in 1787, when he offered the scheme
to the Constitutional Convention. Wilson's 20th century counterpart,
Indiana Senator Birch Bayh, tried essentially the same approach in
1970, with the same result: failure. The constitutional provision,
which established an Electoral College, has weathered its 183rd year of
intermittent assault and still seems as immune to change as the law of
gravity.